Ya, its day 3 for me and I did 3/5 better barter and 3/5 salvage. (most of my points) settled near 2 traders. I struggled just to buy a set of clothes, a few mods, and 6 steel to repair my wrenches. (selling almost everything I find/ wrench)

The question is how far this will work. Vanilla there is no respawn for cars.
At least it fills my belly and i guess i can pay 1-2 decent tools/weapons at end of week 1.

The bad is that i have no idea when the random horde will hit me after day 7. So i cant focus enough on making money.
I guess the real crying starts when i cant buy a Q5 or Q6 auger in the second week if a trader offers one.

And i have luck, i had many cars near my gamestart, without i guess it is really hard if all you can sell are iron clubs. Thats not even enough for food

I'm sorry but this is a survival game, not a shopping simulator. Looting and manufacturing should always be the defaults, with trading a distant third.

Seeming every new version has had tweeks and changes to traders/economy, and the devs made a thread to get feedback on trader balance not long ago seems to me economy/trading is important to them. Looting has taken a hit, and is not as amazing as it once was. (its no longer required, no recipe books, nothing you can only loot and not craft, rarer high quality)

With additions of quests, and eventually factions and NPCs I feel like traders will become a huge center piece, and looting will be mainly just for those rare legendary items we have yet to see (unless they fix things and give looting more purpose again)

Manufacturing? for what purpose? the only things you need to craft in high numbers is ammo and building supplies. If you are manufacturing anything else its... here it comes.. to sell to trader.

The game is a survival game, true. With RPG, tower defense, fps, horror, a lot of elements from all kinds of genres. People who dont like trading can simply not trade. Balance of it shouldn't concern them in any way.